For Businessweek: with declining birth rates, rich countries need foreigners.
For Businessweek: with declining birth rates, rich countries need foreigners.
Just in time for the Addis Financing for Development conference, an essay [/collection of blogs] on making the Addis Accord better... Some of the ideas have already been incorporated, sort of, a bit.
A CGD Policy Working Paper. The total scale of incremental investment requirements in infrastructure in developing countries has been estimated at around USD 1 trillion a year, with a range of related studies suggesting numbers between $815 billion to $1.3 trillion. While all such numbers are open to considerable debate, and were not designed to measure the cost of delivering the specific SDG infrastructure targets, they suggest the likely scale of the financing challenge for an SDG agenda which includes universal coverage to adequate housing, water, sanitation, modern energy and communications technologies. The complexity of infrastructure finance in developing countries suggests that external private investment will remain a minor player in the financing of infrastructure for development. Nonetheless, reforms of development finance institutions and multilateral development banks alongside infrastructure pricing in recipient countries could considerably increase financial flows, and the Addis Financing Conference later this year could help provide the authorizing environment for such reforms.
Slightly misleading headline. Go, just remember you'll be pretty useless, and see it as a learning experience --the start and motivation for a life of advocating or working for development. For @BW.
This CGD Policy Paper focuses on invented or created technologies of the type that could (theoretically) be subject to patents and the potential for international agreements including the Addis Financing Conference to better create and share such technologies. It discusses the nature of invented technologies and the standard policy tools used to support its development. It then addresses two separate questions related to inventions and development: ‘what is invented’ and ‘how it diffuses.’ With this background, it goes on to discuss the role of policy tools including patents, tiered pricing, research support, advance market commitments, and prizes in creating development-friendly technology. It concludes with some recommendations for language to be inserted in the Addis Declaration
By 2030 we may have managed to eradicate being poor by the average definition two or three decades ago of the poorest 15 countries with available statistics updated by more or less reliable inflation and purchasing power numbers since then.... That's what happens when you have to change the method of calculating extreme poverty because your boss said it could be eradicated. For @BW.
[That said, should note that means in the last few years I've suggested (a) it may be possible to end extreme poverty defined as $1.25/day, which would be good; (b) that it wouldn't be good enough (c) if the SDGs are going to have the goal of ending extreme poverty we should fix the goal posts and (d) fixing the goalposts means that 'extreme poverty' will be increasingly removed from any country's actual definition of poverty...]
A piece on Addis, Paris, New York, post-2015 and financing for development for the IMF's Finance and Development.
Real hope for the eradication of polio, measles, rubella, and maybe malaria. For @BW.
Because there are less of them. For @BW.
A CGD Essay previously published as an article on the SDGs and MDGs in Politica Exterior (¿Hemos perdido el rumbo? De los ODM a los ODS).
Developing countries are increasingly robust to shocks. For @BW.
The US response to the AIIB is pathetic. For @BW.
Huntington's thesis isn't doing so well with the test of time. For @BW.
US patent system is terrible. So is China's --time for a deal. For @BW.
Trade should be more of a political hot potato. For @BW.
US vaccination rates are terrible --for @BW.
We need a stronger WHO and more research. For @BW.
Terror kills hardly anyone. Disease kills millions. For @BW.
Maybe there's hope for Paris UNFCCC, For @BW.
Travel bans won't stop the disease, will stop the fight against it. For @BW.
Social enterprise is lovely but we still need government. For @BW.
The planet --and America-- is safer than it was ten years ago. For @BW.
People who use less electricity than it takes to run your fridge need more power. For @BW.
It would save the world money if we had better health care in the poorest countries. For @BW.
The drug-linked violence that the children are fleeing is in large part our fault. For @BW.
Welcoming the BRICS bank. For @BW.
How Innovation Rewrote the Rules of Foreign Policy --an article for The Breakthrough.
The long term trend is towards cosmopolitanism --and the economic arguments only grow in strength. In @BW.
For @BW --on the great news that the CIA won't be using vax campaigns any more.
For @BW --it turns out the incomes of poor people went up with food prices --luckily...
Tough visa requirements lower tourism arrivals --and the numbers are big. In @BW.
One more place it would be nice to seea bit of US global leadership... in @BW.
The Upside of Down: Why the Rise of the Rest is Great for the West will be published by Basic Books January 7th, 2014.
America is in decline, and the rise of the East suggests a bleak future for the world’s only superpower – so goes the conventional wisdom. But what if the traditional measures of national status are no longer as important as they once were? What if America’s well-being was assessed according to entirely different factors? In The Upside of Down, I argue that America’s so-called decline is only relative to the newfound success of other countries. And there is tremendous upside to life in a wealthier world: Americans can benefit from better choices and cheaper prices offered by schools and hospitals in rising countries, and, without leaving home, avail themselves of the new inventions and products those countries will produce. The key to thriving in this world is to move past the jeremiads about America’s deteriorating status and figure out how best to take advantage of its new role in a multipolar world.
I've written both a New America and CGD blog about the book as well as in the Atlantic, Time, the Washington Post the Globalist and 'the page 99 test'. Extracts appeared in Politico and Salon, and I've talked about the book on a CGD Wonkcast, a CGD launch event, the Financial Times' Alphaville podcast, to Josh Keating in Slate, to Kira Zalan in US News and World Report, with Reuters TV, NHPR, Wisconsin Public Radio, Bloomberg Radio and New America's Weekly Wonk.
Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly and Diane Coyle all say nice things but think the book is too optimistic. Tyler Cowen calls the book excellent. The Diplomat a great read. Lawrence Haddad likes it but thinks it won't persuade. Doug Saunders discusses the book in the Globe and Mail, Ian Birrell in The Guardian, Gregg Easterbrook on ESPN (!), Ali Wyne in the Boston Review, Josh Kim on the Inside Higher Ed blog, Tom Murphy on Humanosphere Reihan Salam on Reuters Blogs and Ed Luce in the FT and it appears (briefly) in this NYT article and this Bloomberg piece by Ezra Klein.
Don't save the climate off the back of the poor --in @BW.